Interbellum: This was an important place in their lives (Flingco Sound System, 2013)

January 12, 2014 at 2:29 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Interbellum: This was an important place in their lives

Second album from Chicago artist Brendan Burke. Minimal, melancholy neo-classical, mainly utilizing piano and strings, but with plenty of field recordings and chatter. “Some Rather Poor Advice” has pulsating, jittering bass tones underneath the slowly paced piano melodies. “I Wish You Hadn’t Done That Richard” is a long, sad piano and string dirge with plenty of voices chattering underneath (and even some horses clopping by, it sounds like), which barely become audible enough to understand, but it doesn’t matter. You’re just too absorbed in the gloriously bummed out mood to care what anyone’s trying to talk about. “We Are All Micromentalists Now” obscures the music even more, with piano and synth softly playing underneath the loud whirr of cars passing by, and just general outside ambience. “He Looked Beyond My Faults (And Saw My Need)” is a return to the studio, with no more field recordings, just piano and crystalline synth tones. “Cayo Costa” is another long droney piece with spoken recordings and a constant machine hum, along with its melancholy piano and strings. Constant seems to be the operative word here; it just keeps going, occasionally focusing on a heart-tugging string part, but otherwise not really building to a climax. Is it hopeless? Is it depressing? Is there a reason to continue? Who knows. All that matters is that this exists, and that you’re in this moment, and that regardless of anything else in the world, right now, this feels right.

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